BJP teams from UP, Bihar help run Bengal backroom operations

Teams of BJP workers from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are helping their Bengal counterparts in the party’s backroom election management operations as they are trying to replicate the party’s electoral victories in the UP assembly elections of 2017 and that of Bihar last year. The focus is to import the “successful” booth management strategies deployed in both the states to Bengal, and track polling day work, a senior party leader said.

Over 200 people from both states are working at this, and the teams are led by leaders such as UP deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya and former union minister Radha Mohan Singh, UP BJP's backroom strategist Sunil Bansal and UP general secretary JPS Rathore. While Maurya has been asked to look at seats in Howrah, Bansal is helping the Bengal team with South 24 Parganas and Kolkata. All three areas had no BJP MP/MLAs in 2016. But there have been significant defections to the BJP from TMC from these areas in the last six months.

In Bihar, the BJP won 74 of the 121 seats it contested, becoming the party with the best strike rate. Minister Nitin Navin and BJP’s Bihar unit vice president Rajesh Verma have their teams working in Bengal this season.


In UP, the party won with a massive three-fourth majority –– 312 out of 403 seats —in the 2017 assembly polls, reducing both the SP and BSP to single digits. Rathore explained that in UP the party had adopted a three-way strategy that focussed on strengthening the communication to voters, a pre-poll strategy under which campaigns for different sections of society were run and lastly, polling day strategy when the party focussed on ensuring that voters cast their votes before 10 am.

A lot of it this is being replicated in Bengal, he said. “UP is a different state, and there are things that worked for us there. There are different things working for us here. We are only helping our Bengal unit. We are providing them support as relatives do whenever there is a wedding in the family.” Similar to the party's programme, Maati Tilka Pratigya, in UP targeted at farmers, the Bengal party unit too launched ‘EK muttho Chaal’ in January. Unlike in UP, Bihar and Gujarat, where it held town halls for youth and women, it has launched large events such as Parivartan Yatra, Ambedkar Yatra and Birsa Munda Yatra to increase its visibility.